


Come on, man! It's Summer!

by krabbypetty



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie's Red Shorts, Fluff, M/M, One Shot, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 22:49:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23134939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krabbypetty/pseuds/krabbypetty
Summary: "Richie, do you know what love is?"“Love is when you’re comfortable enough to take a shit with the door open.”
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 78





	Come on, man! It's Summer!

"Richie, do you know what love is?" Eddie asking, breaking the peaceful, and rare, silence between the two.  
  
It was a beautiful day in the middle of their last summer together. Eddie was moving to New York University and out of this shithole to do bigger and better things. Richie only knew it was a matter of time, the losers had been dropping off the radar like flies since Bev moved to Portland on her fourteenth birthday. Next had been Ben - they had all seen that coming, poor kid was too heartbroken that the girl he loved left and never even sent them so much as a postcard since - followed by Bill then last year Stan got sent away to some religious Jewish school or some shit. It was only the three musketeers left: Eddie, Richie and Mikey.  
  
Until the first day of this summer when Eddie told him he was moving away. He'd gotten into NYU on a full scholarship, finally free from his overbearing mother. Who was Richie to shit all over his enthusiasm by crying like a little girl when he broke the news? So he held in the pain and forced a smile, congratulating his friend and making a few inappropriate joke about all the college pussy was gonna get. Eddie seemed to see through all of Richie's bullshit - of course he did, Eddie knew him too well by now to know that his shitty jokes were just a barrier to keep himself from being vulnerable - and spent the following week trying to convince Richie that he would never forget him like the others and they'd write letters and call and send fucking smoke signals if that’s all they could manage. Eventually it got tiring having the same conversation over and over so Richie proposed that they take a vow of silence about moving and college and getting out of shitty Derry, that way they could enjoy the memories they had together rather than dreading the future.  
  
The plan worked.  
  
So far it was the best summer of Richie's life. Eddie didn't want to spend any time in his house with Sonia who was constantly trying to get him to drop out of NYU and study closer to home, so he practically stayed in Richie's room with him. They’d have days where they just rented as many movies as they could afford and have marathons, or they have days like this where the sun was shining and the fresh air was welcomed.  
  
So that’s how they ended up lying together in a grassy field nearby the quarry, just looking up at the clouds go by.

Richie had called Mike to come hang with them, but he was helping with his grandparents. He’d been doing that a lot more lately.

So that just left Richie and Eddie, the dynamic duo.

And of all the things Richie thought they’d be talking about, love definitely was not one of them.

“Uh,” Richie stopped to clear his throat before his voice cracked like he was fifteen all over again. “Yeah, sure, I know what love is.” He started to fiddle with his glasses on his face, adjusting them and pushing them up the bridge of his nose, in a nervous tick he’d had since he was a child. Thankfully Eddie kept his gaze towards the sky so he couldn’t see the blush spreading across his face all the way to the tips of his ears.

Him and Eddie didn’t talk about feelings or shit like that. They talked about comic books, video games, school drama, movies, pretty much anything that didn’t involve feelings.

There was always something hanging in the air between them but neither one of them wanted to address it. Richie didn’t know if it was the same as Eddie, but talking about how he felt instead of just making dumb jokes just made everything seem too… _real_.

He couldn’t tell Eddie how much he was going to miss seeing him every day, he couldn’t tell him that he was a flaming homo, he couldn’t open up about his fears of being the only one left in this backwards ass town and being forgotten about by everyone he loves.

So he kept his mouth shut and he followed Eddie around like a loyal puppy and that suited him just fine.

However, he hadn’t expected such a deep question so suddenly and asked so seriously.

Richie desperately wanted to know what Eddie had been thinking about before to ask him a question about love.

It became obvious to Richie that he had spent too much time thinking when Eddie’s brown doe-eyes met his with a questioning look.

“Love is when you’re comfortable enough to take a shit with the door open.” He finally answered.

Eddie’s response was immediate when he sat up and starred down at Richie with a scowl.

“I was asking for real you fucking asshole!” The shorter boy snapped at him, whacking him on the stomach, forcing him to let out an ‘Oof!’ before he sat up too.

“Why do you wanna know, Eds?” Richie asked with an almost nervous laugh, bringing his hands up to sweep his unruly hair out of his face. His hands felt too fidgety and he needed something to do with them but unfortunately, he’d promised Eddie he’d cut back on the smoking, so he didn’t have any of his cigarettes with him.

As if by subconscious, his hands moved to a loose thread at the bottom of Eddie’s red shorts. He still wore them religiously because he had a crazy idea in his head that they made his legs look longer and therefore made him look taller. They didn’t make him taller, but his legs did look great so Richie sure as hell wasn’t complaining.

The familiar act of Richie picking at him seemed to calm Eddie down from his little gremlin temper and his scowl softened before he answered Richie’s question.

“I just… do.”

“Fine.” Richie let out a sigh and lay back down on the grass, resting his head on his arms spread behind him, forcing them to sit still. He kept his gaze glued to the clouds above despite feeling Eddie’s stare burning straight through him. This moment felt too vulnerable, too REAL, and he knew he could’ve easily made another joke about love being the sight of Sonia Kaspbrak’s juicy ass against the pale moonlight and Eddie would have gotten mad and probably stormed out, forcing Richie to chase him and stopping at nothing to make him laugh and forget the whole thing but… He didn’t want to do the same old routine today.

Eddie was leaving soon anyway so it couldn’t hurt to maybe… allude to certain feelings he may or may not have had since he was nine and fell out of a tree because of a stupid dare and the smallest boy in his class rushed over in a blind panic, puffing at his inhaler like it was air, and helped him to the nurses office, holding his hand the whole time.

“Love is… Warmth.” Richie answered softly, letting his thoughts drift out of his mouth as quickly as they came to his head. “I suppose there’s lots of types of love; family love, love for your pals, mommy and daddy wrestling under the covers kind of love,” He smiled to himself in a pleased way when he heard Eddie snickering beside him. “But I guess it’s just feeling so good when you’re with someone you love, and sometimes you stop to think about how much you care about them or what you would do for them, and you just feel… warm. It’s like something that’s always been there and you’ve never really noticed it because it’s just so natural to love… certain people. But in any scenario, if you love someone it just means you never want for them to leave or get hurt or even have bad days when they’re with you so you do anything you can to make them smile or hear their cute laugh or- y’know, make them feel as good as they make you feel.”

A silence followed Richie’s words and they seemed to linger in the air. Richie could hear Eddie shifting around a lot but he didn’t dare glance over. He was terrified he’d revealed too much, as he always did when it came to teasing Eddie, and he didn’t want to look over and see disgust or, worse, pity.

Shit.

He had to backtrack quickly or else he was about to fuck up the little time he still had with Eddie.

“Or you know, love is that thing guys say to get to third base.” He finished with a hopefully-not-obviously-forced laugh.

Another silence lingered.  
Richie was starting to sweat. Despite being the Trashmouth of the group, Eddie was the loudmouth and he wasn’t ever this quiet for so long.

He heard him shuffling closer and, like the coward he was, closed his eyes.

Eddie was likely moving to stand and get as far away from Richie as humanly possible. At least he wouldn’t have the heart-breaking memory of having to actually _watch him_ walk away.

The next thing Richie knew, he felt a pair of lips against his own and he froze in shock. His mouth remaining closed by slackened.

It only lasted a few seconds but it was easily already top 3 best moments of Richard Tozier’s life, followed by killing a fucking space clown with his friends when they were thirteen, and that time Haystack had managed to burp the alphabet without throwing up.

“I liked the first answer better.” Eddie uttered in a tone that was much softer than the one that was usually directed at him.

“Uhh…” Richie stared up at him with his mouth gaping like a fish fresh out of water. He couldn’t process what in the ever loving fuck had just happened. “You always were the brave one, Eds.” He commented with a goofy smile once he’d gotten his wits about him.

Eddie’s eyes fluttered downward as he tried to suppress a smile from the compliment. He moved closer to Richie and lay back down next to him, turning as soon as Richie did so they were both on their side, facing each other. They’d been in this position a million times before - at sleepovers, movie nights, parties, you name it – and there’d always be some unspoken wall between them that they’d never cross. That is, until Eddie just took a fucking sledgehammer and demolished the wall altogether!

“You make me feel warm too.”

“Baby, if love is warmth, then you’re my sunshine.”

With that, Richie finally pushed himself to do the one thing he’d always dreamed about but never thought he would get to do and that was to kiss the hypochondriac that thought he had gotten mono from a drinking fountain.

Thankfully, Eddie was much more prepared than he had been and actually kissed back.

Whatever the future held for them both, they would tackle it together. It had always been Richie and Eddie from the start, R+E, and they wouldn’t let anything change that. After all, if two boys were willing to kiss in public in the middle of an AIDS epidemic, there pretty much wasn’t anything else left to do that would be as scary and as thrilling.

No matter what, they would find their way back to each other.

The sun shined brightly in the sky, basking two boys in a warm glow.

It was a perfect Summers day.


End file.
